Assembly plans to pass single-payer health bill — again

The state Assembly on Tuesday is set to pass yet again legislation that would establish a single-payer health care system for the state.

The New York State Assembly. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union)

Though such a system has long been advocated for by some Democrats, the move likely will amount to little more than more pomp and circumstance with the bill’s chances of passing the Republican-held Senate being slim. The bill has the backing of 30 Democratic senators (including members of the Independent Democratic Conference) but lacks a Republican sponsor.

Yet Assembly Democrats, who control the chamber, contextualized the bill by berating congressional action to replace the Affordable Care Act with House Republicans’ American Health Care Act, which is awaiting action in the Senate. New York Democrats at large have warned that the AHCA could have devastating impacts on the state, should it become law as drafted.

“Our government has a moral obligation to ensure the provision of basic services for its citizens — there’s no question that health care lies at the top of that list,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, said at a Capitol press conference. “The administration in Washington has abandoned its duty to serve the needs of everyday citizens. The vote they took to adopt their health care agenda that would jeopardize the ability of women, children and seniors to access affordable care is shocking and appalling.”

The single-payer bill going before the Assembly on Tuesday has been passed by that chamber in each of the past two years.

Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan, said he has not seen anything come out of Washington that would keep the state from being able to implement a single-payer system should new federal health regulations be passed.

Gottfried said the state would have to raise $91 billion in revenues to fund such a system, but it ultimately would translate to $45 billion savings for New Yorkers statewide compared to what they pay for health care currently.

Fiscal conservatives have warned that that math doesn’t check out.

“Beyond affordability questions, a single-payer system would impose government price control on all health-care services, eliminating any vestige of market competition in a major sector of the state economy,” the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond wrote last year after the Assembly passed this same bill. “It would also channel billions more dollars through New York’s notoriously dysfunctional state capital, multiplying opportunities for favoritism and corruption.”

Still, short of handcuffing the single-payer bill to the other chamber’s priority legislation as session comes to a close next month, it is unlikely the legislation will make it to the governor’s desk.

“We’re hoping with the passage of this bill, we’ll really kind of start a conversation about what’s the best way to really make sure that we have health care for as many people here in the state of New York as possible,” Heastie said.